On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
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> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:27 PM, And Rosta <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro, On 14/08/2012 01:56:
>>
>> Does anyone know if the object-initial languages (OVS and OSV) tend to be
>>> ergative-absolutive?
>>>
>>
>> I'm told that British Sign Language is OSV and nom--acc. The
>> cognitive--discoursal principle responsible for BSL OSV seems to be
>> presentational. "The boy eats the cake" > "Here's a cake; along comes the
>> boy; ...and he eats it".
>>
>
> Hmm... quite interesting!
>
> I made the ergativity hypothesis thinking that the patient would be the
> topic of the sentences in OSV and OVS languages. But it is interesting that
> it presents first the "eatee" and then the eater.
>
I can also think about it like: Here is the object and along with it comes
(the subject that does the action). So it prefers using a SV-adjacency than
an OV-adjacency (used by 91% of the languages, according to statistics
presented before).
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>
>>
>> --And.
>>
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>